Focusing efforts at the departmental level is important for promoting gender and racial/ethnic equity at the university. In particular, increasing understanding of specific departmental issues and establishing department-specific approaches can be invaluable for reducing microaggressions and other forms of bias as well as for increasing supports for greater diversity inclusion.
Thus, the ADVANCE Office for Faculty Equity & Resilience (OFER) team partners with departments to engage them in a process of self-assessment, goal setting, action planning, and annual re-assessment. This Department Equity Action Team (DEAT) process communicates and incentivizes a shared responsibility for promoting gender and racial/ethnic equity.
Departments interested in the DEAT process work with ADVANCE OFER to:
- Form an action team of interested faculty members
- Conduct a self-assessment through interviews and surveys
- Engage the full department in a discussion of the assessment results
- Establish equity goals and identify annual benchmarks for assessing progress
- Design their own action plan and an organizational structure for ongoing monitoring of progress
